10th-grade Sex Education Set For Philadelphia Schools

December 02, 1985|The New York Times

Like most students at Olney High School, 16-year-old Janetta D. Greene gathers with friends each morning before 8 o'clock on the ornamental stone- and-concrete walkway leading to the school's main entrance.

Clutching their books, students talk about school, boys, parties, and the latest records.

But, Greene said, they never discuss sex.

"No, not out there," said the 12th grader. "Everybody would be listening to what you're saying."

Starting next September, however, thousands of students in the Philadelphia public schools will be discussing sex, relationships, birth control, pregnancy and teen-age fatherhood in the classroom as the city introduces a mandatory sex education program for 10th graders.

The course, "Adolescent Sexuality and Parenthood," is being introduced as city officials and community leaders search for new ways to cope with high rates of teen-age pregnancy and infant mortality here. Both rates are above the national average.

For the past year, the course has been available to high school students only with parental permission. About 12,000 students took the course. Next year, nearly 18,000 sophomores are expected to take the two-week course, except for those students submitting a letter from parents requesting exemption.

In contrast to the opposition that surrounded a proposal for a nearly identical course in 1979, the new course was approved this month with little public outcry. Many parents testifying before the school board urged offering the course, instead, to eighth graders.

"A lot has changed since 1979 in terms of public awareness of the problem of teen pregnancy," said Lucille Howard, a staff member for a council on teen-age pregnancy made up of community residents. "In 1979, they still had their heads buried in the sand. Now people are concerned about the problem."

In 1984, according to a city report, 4,385 babies were born to girls under the age of 19. In 1982, the last year for which comparative figures were available, 19.4 percent of the babies born in Philadelphia were born to teen- agers as against 14.2 percent nationwide, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Last Tuesday, a commission appointed by Mayor W. Wilson Goode released a report linking the rate of teen-age pregancy to the city's high infant-mortali ty rate and recommended that the city provide contraceptives and prenatal care in the schools. The report said that babies born to 15- to 17-year-old mothers were twice as likely to be born underweight as babies born to women in their early 20s. Underweight babies are 20 times more likely to die before their first birthday than heavier babies, the panel said.

Greene's mother, Eve Greene, said she supported mandatory sex education. "I think the course would be wonderful," she said. "It would help prepare the young people. They're exposed to so much today."

Clark E. White, 36, the divorced father of a 10th grader, said that discussing birth control with his two daughters would be "unfamiliar territory" and that such a course would make his job "a lot easier."

Robin B. Wechsler, a health education teacher who has taught the elective course at Olney, said that most of her students were either "curious or scared."

The girls "worry that if they want to hold onto a boyfriend," she said, they have to have sex.

Though Kimberly S. Broadnax, a ninth grader at Olney, wonders if her classmates can conduct themselves maturely in the class, she is looking forward to taking the course next year and thinks it is a good idea.

"Some young kids are getting pregnant and getting the wrong idea about things," she said. "They think parenthood is all fun and games."